One of our biggest stars is none other than Stormtrooper Larry himself, in the form of Hasbro’s Black Series 6-inch figure! So it’s only fitting that our first review will be of tiny Larry.

Packaging:

The contents consist of a no-frills window box, the figure, a blaster rifle, and a blaster pistol. The only difference between this and the SDCC-exclusive stormtrooper was that the latter came in a fancier packaging and included a mini booklet of the stormtrooper’s evolution. Otherwise, both figures are the same.

Interestingly, the stormtrooper is packaged holding the blaster rifle in his right hand. This has led to some warping issues, where the rifle becomes slightly bent if not packed properly in the cutout. Stormtrooper Larry is one such victim of this warping issue. Perhaps his bent gun is the reason he can’t hit anything.

Sculpt

No complaints here — Hasbro did a wonderful job capturing the stormtrooper’s many details, from the greeblies on the helmet to the small latches on the chest. However, there ARE two flaws:

The nose area is too recessed. While it looks okay from the front, it becomes apparent when looking at the figure straight on.

The boxes on the front of the belt should be three separate pieces. Here, they are molded as one and painted with black lines to simulate separation.

Paintwise, the helmet and chestpiece get the most accurate treatment. The painting accuracy degrades slightly at the belt and the bottom of the thigh armor, but not too much. The worst paint application is on the thermal detonator, which looks like it was painted by a half-blind 3-year old with cerebral palsy. Thankfully, since it’s in the back it won’t get noticed too much.

Accessories

The Black Series figures come with two accessories. For the First Order trooper, they are the standard F-11D blaster rifle and the Sonn-Blas SE-44C pistol.

Both firearms come with pegs that slot neatly into the thigh armor. However, the pistol has a tendency to fall off and could easily get lost.

In terms of accuracy, both are molded clearly enough to make out fine details like the backwards scope on the rifle and the AR sight on the pistol. The rifle is even painted in three tones, including the silver accents on the scope holder and eyepieces.

As mentioned previously, the rifle has a tendency to warp at the muzzle tip if it is not packaged properly. This can be fixed by immersing it in hot water and straightening the bent before it cools.

Poseability

According to Hasbro, the FO stormtrooper has 27 points of articulation, which is impressive given its small size. Since I’m too lazy to list them all down, we’ll just focus on the shortcomings.

The most glaring one is the lack of double-jointed elbows, something which the original trilogy trooper has. This means the First Order version has limited flexibility when it comes to holding his rifle and aiming:

While that pose above looks natural from the front, Larry is actually holding the rifle away from his body just so it lines up properly in his hands. Honestly, this is an accurate representation of the real thing: the actors who played First Order troopers in the film reportedly can’t move their elbows much because of the gaskets.

Finally, the figure also can’t sit down properly. This is due to the belt pieces getting in the way of the thigh armor. The best you can do is make him squat:

So is the Black Series FO stormtrooper worth it? The answer is: YES.

The Bandai 6-inch figure may be more poseable, and the similarly sized Revoltech may be more accurate. However, both of them are plastic model kits that are more fragile and can easily come loose. The Black series trooper is tougher, made of more resilient materials and can easily withstand the weekly abuse of doing ridiculous poses for his Saturday snapshots.

Just make sure you get the ones without the warped guns, to help them shoot Resistance scum more reliably.